Right before bed last night I started thinking about Lego.

Thinking about how following the instructions and building the sets with my littel guy is a lot of fun, and an exercise in patience, for both him and me.

Of course, freebuilding out of the big box of random legos (that all of the sets eventually disentegrate into) is a lot of fun, too. (For some reason I find myself building a lot of vehicles when we are in free building mode.)

Then I started to think about how building from the sets with the instructions can inform the freebuilding. Not only do you get a lot of great pieces from the sets, but you get to see interesting ways those pieces are used. You get new techniques.

Building from the sets nourishes the freebuilding.

This year I’ve vowed to write 500 words a day. (More accurately, 540 a day, since I didn’t start right on January 1.)

I hope some of that writing will make it’s way to screentone, but a lot of it is really awful, right now.

Not only that, but those 540 words are a lot more difficult to write, it takes a lot longer to hit that word count if I don’t get in any reading that day, or if I don’t manage to do anything but go to work and take care of little guy.

Just as building the lego sets provides nourishment for the freebuilding of Legos, reading, and doing these provide the nourishment for writing.

And on some days I really have to closely examine my day to find something to write about. I really have to notice things to find that nourishment.